WINNING: Anti-Socialist Parody of ‘Monopoly’ Board Game Melts The Internet And Enrages Leftist History Professor

Well, I know what I want for my birthday. This is fantastic! Hasbro released “Monopoly: Socialism” sometime last year. Shame on me for not catching that one. It’s a socialist parody of the iconic board game. When it came to the attention of the Twitterverse, the Internet simply melted down and one notable leftist history professor tweeted out a lengthy evaluation of the game. Hint: he didn’t like it.

People are claiming it is on sale at Target but I have not seen it there – I suspect it has sold out. I looked yesterday and it was for sale on Amazon for $87. Today, it’s going for $100. That’s capitalism for you. Lol. The game mocks the economic system for its intellectual and moral bankruptcy. And it does it in a fine and accurate fashion, I might add. How very American and capitalist.

“This adult party edition of the Monopoly game has players moving around the board contributing to community projects … unless they can steal projects to get ahead,” reads the product description on Amazon. “Contribute to the Community Fund … unless you choose to deplete it. Consider the best interest of the group … unless you want to forget that and just do what you need to do.”

“In the ‘Monopoly: Socialism’ game, players move around the board working together to make a better community by managing and contributing to projects such as a no-tip vegan restaurant, an all-winners school, or a museum of co-creation,” the description continues. “But nobody said that cooperation is easy! You’ll have issues with your neighbors, your DIY community projects go awry, you’re constantly voting to shake things up, and there’s always an emergency that requires dipping into the Community Fund! Contribute all 10 of your chips to win the game, unless the Community Fund runs out of money and everyone loses. So much for a socialist utopia.”

From The Daily Wire:

“According to CNN, players who pass go are given a $50 “living wage” instead of the standard $200.

“Needless to say, leftists have not exactly embraced Hasbro’s parody of their beloved economic system. Nick Kapur, an assistant professor of history at Rutgers University, denounced it on Twitter as a “woefully ill-informed” board game full of “mean-spirited” attacks.

“Obviously, there are critiques of socialism and people can say maybe the market is better at delivering certain types of services than the government,” Kapur told CNN. “But this game didn’t seem to be talking in those terms at all, it just seemed to be saying that ‘Socialism is bad, it makes you poor, you gotta give your money away constantly.'”

Winning is for capitalists. 💰💰💰 At least that's the message behind this parody of Monopoly. But in a Twitter thread that spread widely, a historian said the game gets socialism wrong. https://t.co/OaADlGbDbz

“Released in 2018, the game surprisingly flew under the radar until Kapur’s tweet went viral, racking up 40,000 likes and nearly 15,000 shares, according to the New York Post.

“Snarkily mocks concepts that are actually helpful to society,” said one reviewer on Amazon. “Supposed to be ‘funny’ I guess? Interesting that the underlying message is that capitalism is great, and yet the manufacturers produced such a shoddy product.”

“Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had his own take on the game. “We could do the Venezuela edition: start out (in 1950) with the 4th highest GDP per capital in the world: end starving in the street with massive shortages of food & medicine,” he tweeted.

We could do the Venezuela edition: start out (in 1950) with the 4th highest GDP per capital in the world: end starving in the street with massive shortages of food & medicine. 2/x

“Hasbro has waded into political waters before with the iconic board game. In November of last year, the company released “Monopoly for Millennials,” which satirized said generation’s penchant for spending too much money on experiences.

“Collect Experience points by visiting the hottest Destinations,” read the description on Amazon. “IT’S ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE: In this version of the Monopoly game, the player who collects the most Experience — not the most money — wins the game.”‘

I bought a copy of Hasbro's mean-spirited and woefully ill-informed "MONOPOLY: SOCIALISM" board game so you don't have to – a thread 1/ pic.twitter.com/YhZWDjkAnj

Mr. Kapur lacks any self-awareness whatsoever and does not understand socialism himself evidently. Everything in the game triggered the poor guy. He thinks anyone who plays Monopoly is old and that it is dumb and not ‘European’ enough. Here’s a thought for Kapur… move. Go to Europe and assimilate there. It’s a win-win for everyone, especially American freedom lovers and capitalists.

The critics of the game are missing the point. Kat Timpf: “We’ve seen [socialism] kind of not work in the past, so I feel like it might be fair game to make fun of it…I also don’t understand how people are getting so upset about a game.” I could not have said it any better. Socialism sucks.

From the tagline "Winning is for capitalists" we can see right away that this game is not going to be friendly to whatever it deems "socialism" to be.

Because as we all know "socialists" never play sports or participate in any sort of competitive activity, like board games. 2/

The player tokens include a typewriter, an old-timey phone, a pocket watch, a phonograph, and a CRT television set, presumably because "socialism" is so incredibly outdated? 4/ pic.twitter.com/8R9HoiGO5H

Spaces on the board include a snarkily named hospital and school, because apparently schools are supposed to produce losers and hospitals are only supposed to help some of the people. 5/ pic.twitter.com/gcg3bUKrU1

There are also tons of references to health food and veganism, despite the lack of any clear connection to socialism, apparently because what they share in common is that they are odious things that are fun to mock. 6/ pic.twitter.com/tKzkpQWZ36

For example, there is a community fund, and if a player doesn't have enough money to pay for something, the community fund automatically pays the difference. Which seems kinda socialist at first glance. 9/ pic.twitter.com/R7uTUFcfeC

But the community fund is gleefully and deliberately designed to be constantly running out of money. At this point, the only way to fill it back up and keep the game going is for players to donate money to it voluntarily. 10/

Similarly, when you pass go, you get a $50 "living wage," which was presumably reduced from the usual $200 to emphasize that "socialism makes everyone poorer" or somesuch. 13/ pic.twitter.com/tvEqdf2z5F

Likewise, because "socialism" allegedly hates people doing well, a card lets you confiscate wealth from someone with some sort of vote. But then, rather than actually redistributing that wealth to those less well off, the wealth is simply destroyed and removed from the game. 15/ pic.twitter.com/6WwHZLKppG

I guess maybe in this golden age of "Euro-style" board games like Catan, nobody under 60 plays "Monopoly" anymore? Maybe Hasbro actually knows its audience, and that audience is just hate-filled Boomers raised during the Cold War and triggered by whatever people under 40 do? 20/ pic.twitter.com/DLZtZEaJOY

This thread is great because the descriptions Nick Kapur is providing are hilarious, and he doesn’t even realize that it’s a spot-on description of what socialism actually is, as opposed to what millennials wish it was.